Monthly Archives: August 2015

From 4-6 September, the University will be hosting its 50th year festival. As part of this festival, on 5 September in Keynes Lecture Theatre 2 (KLT2), some of our Maths lecturers will be running a special event on the 50th Anniversary of the Soliton.

Solitons are a unique type of wave and a specialism of many Maths lecturers at Kent. These waves have a rich and fascinating history with many applications, including Tsunamis, Fibre Optics, Superconductors, Photosynthesis and Protein Folding. During our event, we will be playing with the luminous Solitons water tank, experimenting with our 3D printer and looking at
a new model for atomic nuclei.

The event will kick off with a talk by Professor Peter Clarkson on the discovery of solitons, followed by an interactive demonstration in which Lucy Barnes and Argyro Mainou will create fluorescent solitons in a specially designed watertank.

During the coffee break, visitors will have an exciting array of activities to choose from, including hands on experience with a 3D printer and posters showcasing research projects undertaken by local school students in the last month.

After the break, Dr Constanze Roitzheim will introduce us to the fascinating world of Topology and Jenny Ashcroft will create vortex rings using her smoke gun. The day will end with the opportunity to meet up with the speakers at a local pub.

It is with great sadness that we announce that former staff member and honorary graduate Professor Sir Bob Hepple died on 21 August, at the age of 81. We share our condolences with his wife Mary Coussey and the rest of his family.

Sir Bob devoted his life to the struggle for social justice. He was an activist, lawyer, teacher and scholar, who was admired and respected for his commitment to equality and democracy. Kent Law School recognised his extraordinary contribution by awarding him an honorary doctorate in July this year.

Sir Bob was active as a student leader opposing the introduction of racial discrimination in the universities of South Africa. Born in South Africa, he was also active in the South African Congress of Trade Unions, an ally of the African National Congress.

He participated in the underground struggle against apartheid and acted as a lawyer for Mandela and other leaders. He escaped to England in 1963 from the Rivonia trial, in which Mandela and others were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2014, on the 20th anniversary of the new democracy, he was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Gold for his ‘exceptional contribution to the struggle for democracy and human rights’.

In England, he has practised as a barrister and employment judge and pursued an academic career in the Universities of Cambridge, Nottingham, Kent, and UCL, ending as Master of Clare College and Professor of Law in Cambridge. He is an acknowledged international expert and activist in the fields of equality, human rights and labour law.

He was Chair of the international human rights organisations, the European Roma Rights Centre and the Equal Rights Trust, of which was the Honorary President until his death. He was also Honorary President of the Industrial Law Society. He was appointed Queen’s Counsel (honoris causa) in 1996, a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003, and knighted for services to legal studies in 2004.

Sir Bob’s work was critical in shaping the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) and the Race Relations Act (1976), as well as subsequent British equality legislation including the Equality Act 2010. His most recent book, Equality: a New Legal Framework (2011, second edition 2014) is not only an appraisal of the current legislation, but a reflection on the past, present and future of equality law. Sir Bob was an inspiring example of a public intellectual, who combined a keen intellect with great humanity and kindness. He will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

Do you need some advice on writing a great CV, preparing for interview or assessment centres? Pondered what it’s like to work in a particular career? Or wondered what previous students from your subject have gone on to do?

Building on the success of the last two years, Employability Festival gives you the chance to do all this and more.

The highlight of the festival is the annual Careers Fair on Tuesday 3 November from 12.00 – 15.00 in the Sports Centre (Canterbury campus) where the University plays host to over 120 graduate employers. Take charge of your future!

Dr Mikkel Zangenberg, Lecturer in Danish Language and Culture from the Department of Comparative Literature, will be guest speaking at a forthcoming BBC Proms extra event to discuss Danish musician Carl Neilson.

Carl Neilson was a violinist and conductor, and recognised as one of Denmark’s greatest musicians. This year sees the centenary of Neilson’s birth, and Mikkel will be exploring the life and work of Neilson alongside Professor Christopher Cook (Gresham College), Professor Daniel Grimley (University of Oxford), and soloist Emily Beynon.

The event is free and open to all, and will be held 17.54 at the Royal College of Music on Tuesday 25 August.

There will also be a ticket-only performance of Neilson’s Flute Concerto, alongside Benjamin Britton’s Sinfonia da Requiem and Leo Janacek’s Sinfonietta, at 19.30 at the Royal Festival Hall the same evening.

Professor Gordon Lynch, from the Department of Religious Studies, was interviewed by The Independent newspaper last week to preview a forthcoming exhibition at the V&A Museum of Childhood ‘On Their Own Britain’s Child Migrants’.

The exhibition will draw on Gordon’s research on child migration schemes that sent around 100,000 unaccompanied children from the UK to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries from 1869 until the early 1970s.

‘While presented as being in the best interests of the child, the schemes were also intended to build up the British Empire with “good British stock”,’ explains Gordon in the article, which was published last Friday 14 August.

An article by Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner, Reader in the Department of Comparative Literature, features on the front cover of this week’s Times Literary Supplement (TLS), published today, 21 August 2015, and is the lead article in the editorial.

The article, entitled ‘Our Sweet Tooth’, is an extended review of The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets (OUP, 2015), edited by Darra Goldstein, which compiles work from historians, chemists, restaurateurs and neuroscientists, to explore sweets and sweetness from a variety of different perspectives.

‘It appears that our predilection for sweetness is, like the incest taboo, a cross-cultural phenomenon, and that it is ubiquitous and, in all likelihood, innate,’ explains Anna in the article.

You are invited to attend the next all staff presentation on Thursday 10 September from 10.30am to 11.30am in Grimond Lecture Theatre 1*. This project briefing will include the current overall project status, a timeline reminder and work strand information, as well as a range of example KentVision pages. There will be a question and answer session at the end of the presentation.

More information on the project, including links to documents and presentations, can be found on the project webpages.

From Friday 21 August at 6pm for one hour and Sunday 23 August at approximately 4pm for one hour, there will be an electrical shutdown to enable the installation of a new L.V. (Low voltage) panel to the boilerhouse.

The affected areas will be Estates, Maintenance, Grimond, Lumley, Aphra, UELT, Campus Security and both Natwest and Santander banks.

During this period temporary generators will be in place to supply the above areas.

The work will be carried out by SSE and MEM generation.

Could we ask that all electrical equipment that is not needed is isolated and the plug top is removed from the sockets i.e pcs.

This could reduce the amount of power failures when the supplies are re-instated.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused if you have any queries please contact the Estates Helpdesk on 01227 (82) 3209 or email Estateshelpdesk@kent.ac.uk.